Wait, That Bill Passed?

Wait, That Bill Passed?

By Caden Zeigler

During the 2017 Youth and Government District Conference, several students recounted interesting and controversial bills that were proposed. Not all of these bills were centered around current events, but some were rather methods of inspiring thoughtful and sometimes comedic debate.

“The most interesting bill I’ve seen was at state last year in my committee room,” Emma Cook of the Jack C Hays delegation said, “there was a bill to cut all of the rapists’ d*cks off.” The bill didn’t pass, and Emma posed the question, “what about female rapists?… We can’t really cut their d*cks of.” Jokingly, Cook offered the solution of cutting off their entire lower body. “It’s close enough,” she said.

Multiple people mentioned a bill proposed by Bret Johnson, that replaces all names with a specific 10 digit number set. “He says it’s more individualistic,” said Cook, “because there are… 20 thousand people named John.” The bill wasn’t passed at first, but Bret called for a revote and it was.

Bri Branscomb, junior at the Leander delegation, said that “last year, there was a guy who tried to legalize public nudity… everywhere.” She did not know if it got passed at state, “but it got passed at our district” Branscom says “he compared people not wanting to see public nudity to people not wanting their children to see black people during the Jim Crow period.” Branscomb put an amendment on it that “nudity can only be allowed in certain areas… but it can’t be close to a school.”

“He calls it ‘banime’,” Branscomb says, “this year there is a kid who wants to ban all forms of anime.” The bill still passed, though Branscomb did not vote to pass it.

His bill states that any “weeaboo” who is seen watching “anime, reading manga, or having possession of anime merchandise shall be… fined $200, doubling every repeated offense to a max of $6400.” Later in the bill, Skadberg defines a weeaboo as “ a non Japanese person who basically denounces their own culture and calls themselves Japanese. They try to learn japanese through the anime they watch and usually end up pronouncing it wrong and looking like a complete idiot.”

“When you get a bill like ‘banime’ it’s just fun cause nobody is actually like usper for against it,” Bri Branscomb says, “so it’s just a fun bill to debate because no one takes it seriously.”